Maya says that her mom didn’t have any of those mood swings. Or cravings. She basically just looked bloated until she was ready to give birth. This confirms my belief that Maya’s robotic behavior comes exclusively from her mother. Maybe she’s a clone.
My mom wants me in the room when the time comes, but Paul has already said he’s willing to make my excuses. Thank God for Paul. The man has grown on me. I’m not sure I could handle the emotional turmoil of the birth while still pretending everything is magical. Without throwing up. As it is, it’s going to be difficult not to be repulsed by the baby when they hand it to me for the first time.
Newborns are not cute. They’re hideous, squishy pink larvae that don’t look like either parent regardless of what anyone says. Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, human babies are fugly. I feel like I would be more emotionally attached to a baby platypus than a human.
Maya agrees with me. She says that there’s a picture of her holding her two brothers after they were born and she’s not smiling.
“I was afraid of them.”
“Afraid of babies?” I asked.
“You just wait,” she said knowledgeably. “They’re fragile and horrifying. Like tiny monsters that suck the life out of you. Every noise they make means something, and they always need something. Food, diapers, sleep.” She grimaced.
“So you don’t want kids someday?”
“Probably not,” she said. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t, so I asked her why. “Because no matter what you do, they can still get messed up anyway. There’s no guarantee that they won’t do drugs or get sick or end up hating my guts just for trying to be a good mom.”
“You worry about that kind of stuff?” I was amazed. It was also kind of refreshing to hear, in a “shit happens” kind of way.
“If I don’t have kids, I don’t have to. How’s your head?”
“Fine,” I lied.
She’s right, though, of course. Maya may not be the warm-and-fuzzy type. She might not even like kids. But she always notices the little things and responds accordingly like a friendly robot. She can read my moods, and she always knows when she can get away with asking a steady flow of questions and when it would be best to wait for me to tell her something on my own. She may not be nice, but she’s really good.
And I’m not just saying that because I’m sleeping with her.
It’s been about three weeks since our first time, and every time since then has been different. The first time, neither of us knew what we were doing. Obviously.
I don’t think either of us was nervous; if Maya was, then I’d missed it completely. The second time, Maya climbed through my bedroom window again, and instead of teasing me for hours, she got into bed with me, pulled down my pajama pants, and put the condom on me herself because I was already hard. I’m not sure how a person can be so regimented in one aspect of their life and then so completely free in another. It makes no sense that Maya would color-code her notebooks and analyze my headaches and then completely lose herself in sex without worrying about our parents finding out. But in this case, I don’t want her to make sense. I want her to be Maya, and I want to have sex with her.
The third time was completely different. I’m not saying that I didn’t connect with Maya the first time or look into her eyes and drift off to another place, because I did that, as much as anyone can in a storage room, but this was different. We could actually study each other in daylight. It was just the two of us with no interruptions from anyone, including my imaginary friends, and I’m still not sure why they gave us privacy.
I’m not supposed to say this, but she’s not always as beautiful as she was that afternoon. I’m supposed to say that she is always beautiful and that it doesn’t matter what she’s wearing, but that’s one of those things that men say because it’s the most correct way to lie. There are moments when Maya sort of looks like a newly hatched iguana with squinty eyes and puffy cheeks, like in the morning when we’re sitting outside our first-period class, waiting for the bell to ring.
But that afternoon, she looked more beautiful tangled in my sheets than she’s ever looked in clothes.
We never stopped touching each other. I developed an appreciation for body parts that don’t normally get much attention. Like her wrists or the really tender spot on the back of her knee. I liked knowing I was the only one who got to touch her. There were long, comfortable silences where she ran her fingers across my stomach and let me twist my fingers in her hair. She smelled incredible, not like perfume or lotion, just like her.
I felt like I could tell her everything, like what I actually saw in church when I had to close my eyes or why I had horrible headaches and couldn’t sleep sometimes. Every fear I’d ever had. In those moments I felt like she would understand and nothing would change between us, but I didn’t want to tell her like this. I didn’t want to tell her all that stuff when I was feeling happy. It would’ve ruined the feeling for both of us, and then the afternoon wouldn’t have been the day I opened my heart to Maya—it would be the day she found out I was broken.
When she said she had to leave, I wouldn’t let her put her clothes back on, which led to a wrestling match that gave me an unfair advantage. Poor Maya.
Mom and Paul came home about half an hour after Maya left. They’d brought pizza, and Paul and I politely ignored my mom when she insisted that two extra-larges were way too much for us, even though she finished most of one herself. Thank God for Paul or we could’ve starved.
That night, Maya climbed through my bedroom window, but instead of climbing into bed with me, she tilted her head toward the window and climbed back down. I followed her into the driveway and then toward the small park on the corner of our neighborhood. It was chilly out and I thought she looked cold without a sweater. She glanced back at me, flashed a grin, and started running toward the line of trees on the far side of the park. When I was younger, I wasn’t allowed to venture this far alone, and for some reason that old boundary tugged at me.
I followed her to the other side of the trees, where the street curved out of the neighborhood and toward the freeway. Maya hadn’t stopped running. She was ahead of me, far ahead of me, and when I called out, she didn’t stop. I ran after her.
Until I saw her veer straight into traffic.
I screamed her name, but she just turned into vapor as a truck plowed through her.